Gillingham boss Steve Lovell wasn’t impressed by the delivery against Carlisle on Saturday.

The Gills weren’t short of the ball in dangerous areas against but failed to capitalise.

Lovell said: “We had balls in wide areas and the balls into the box weren’t good enough, we were playing into the defenders’ hands.

“Clint Hill (the Carlisle central defender) won every header. Why? Because we were putting it on his head.

“You would think out there (the players) would think, ‘well he is winning headers, I will keep it away from him’, but they didn’t. That is something we will talk about when we play up there."

Report: Gillingham 1 Carlisle United 1

Reflecting on the performance, Lovell said: “It wasn’t a top performance, by far, but we didn’t lose.

“We are getting there. It will be a long, long haul to get to where we want to be, but we are on the right step, it is just disappointing not to win the game.

“If they hadn’t have got their penalty (to level the scores after Luke O’Neill’s early opener for Gills) then I think we would have gone onto win it.

“The penalty gives them a lift. It was a definite penalty, no complaints, he tucked it away and then they hung on, they tried to get us on the counter attack second half, but they stuck men behind the ball.

“We had a couple of opportunities but couldn’t break them down.”

Gillingham might have had a better chance had one of their penalty shouts in the second half convinced the referee.

Lovell felt that a challenge on Lee Martin was worthy of a penalty but nothing was given.

“That is gone now and we can’t do anything about it,” said the Gills boss.